Walker and I stand two feet apart, silver bars separating us on four sides.
I reach my hands around the bars and shake. We’re in cages, separated from one another. Cages. Like animals.
“Feisty, eh?” Scarface says, eyeing me from a few feet away. “It’ll be a pleasure to break you in.”
Walker and my sister share another cage. I’m not alone. My cage is occupied by two other women, dirty-faced and skinny. The men, our men, are bound, gagged, and tied to beams against the back wall of the building. The room is long and cavernous. There’s a dead or dying body of a man in a similar position nearby. The whole scene is like it’s out of a torture porn movie.
I look at the two women locked up with me. One is asleep, or at least I hope she is. I can’t see her face. The other meets my stare. It’s impossible to tell her age. Under the grime, her hair is blonde and tired, cornflower blue eyes assess me in return. She doesn’t look weak. She just looks pissed.
There are tables around the room and at closer inspection it seems like we’re in some sort of bar. Or at least it has a bar. Row after row of liquor is piled behind the bar and men sit with tumblers of amber liquid on the tables. It looks like they wiped out every stash in the county. Men plus liquor plus women in cages? This can’t end well.
My cheek still burns from the slap and I have little doubt I’ll get another if I shout out. I sneak a glance at Walker. From the curl on her lip and narrowed eyes, I know she’s holding back, too.
I’m relieved when they walk away, waving for more drinks from the bar. Their distance doesn’t mean they ignore us though. They jeer and make vulgar gestures. One youngish guy with a shaggy, unkempt beard blows me a kiss. My fingers tighten on the bars.
“They call themselves the Winchesters,” the woman behind me whispers once the men are far enough away. I think back to my other life and the famous TV show characters by the same name and glance at them again. I come to my senses.
“Like the town?” I ask.
“Yes, and the guns.”
“What do they want?”
“They’re Traders. Or at least they pretend to be. Liquor, drugs, people.”
“So they’re the type that make the crappy part of the apocalypse even crappier? Perfect.” For a fleeting moment I want to see them face up against a Hybrid. I glance at my sister, who is looking back at me with curious green eyes, and squelch the thought. No. There’s no place, not even here, for Hybrids.
“Pretty much.” She looks me up and down. “You’re pretty clean. You’ll get picked soon.”
“Picked for what?”
“What do you think?” She rolls her eyes at my naiveté. But the worry on my face must be more than even I can manage to hold back and she says, “Honestly, getting it over with may be better than waiting around. It’s the waiting that gets to you, you know?”
“No, not really,” I mutter.
“You think you can stop them?” She snorts. “You can’t. They’ve been terrorizing this area for the last year. None of the other communities have been able to stop them.” She kicks the ground with her boot and looks at the other girl. “I came here to get my sister. They snatched her while she was gathering mushrooms in the forest. I had a plan, too. All it got me was locked up with her and well, you see what happened to my friend.”
I don’t have to follow her gaze to know she’s looking at the other man hanging from the wall.
“How long have you been here?” I ask.
“A week maybe.”
“Is anyone looking for you?”
A flicker of guilt crosses her face. “I live in a community not far from here. We agreed to wait a few more days. Well, they agreed. I didn’t. She’s my sister. I couldn’t let them just take her and do…well, God knows what to her.”
“So you left without them?” Sounds familiar.
“Yeah. It was dumb.”
I look at the girl. “Is she okay?”
“No.” Her chin juts out but the defiance is just to cover up something she doesn’t want to say.
“What’s your name?”
“Miranda.”